WHY WAR WITH IRAN IS INEVITABLE

One of Marx’s more intriguing concepts was that of a “correlation of forces.” If you have a sufficient number of factors coming together in the right way at the right time, it’s very hard to avoid a particular outcome. However much George Bush would like to avoid a war with Iran on top of the current war in Iraq, he’ll soon have no other choice.

The President gave a magnificent speech yesterday, broadcast on national television as a major address on foreign policy. Finally he named the enemy by name. The evil we are fighting is not some amorphous “terrorism,” but in his words, “Islamic radicalism,” “Jihadism,” and “Islamo-fascism.”

Even more important, he repeatedly compared Jihadism to Communism. And not just Soviet Communism, but to Chinese Communism as well. Islamic radicals, he said, are the “enemies of humanity” whose “shameless cruelty” and “heartless zealotry” are the same as Stalin and his gulags, Mao and his Cultural Revolution, and Pol Pot’s killing fields.

Just as the struggle against Communism was the great struggle of the last century, so Mr. Bush declared that the struggle against Radical Islam is “the great challenge of our new century.”

Perhaps my favorite line in his speech was “Islamic radicalism, like the ideology of communism, contains inherent contradictions that doom it to failure.”

Then he went after Iran by name, referring to it along with Syria as an “outlaw regime,” with a “long history of collaboration with terrorists,” that is “equally as guilty of murder” as they are, concluding: “Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has also chosen to be an enemy of civilization.”

Yet even though he called for “the civilized world” to hold Iran to account for being an enemy of civilization, he continues to shy away from any sort of actual military confrontation with the Tehran Mullacracy.

His hope is that somehow a Democratic Revolution will be sparked or spontaneously emerge to sweep away the fascist ayatollahs. The hope is in vain, for it is soon to be OBE: overtaken by events.

War is coming between America and Iran because the mullahs in Tehran see war as their only hope of keeping their power. They see war as the only way to prevent the coming democratic revolution that will sweep them away. They have convinced themselves that – get ready – that it is a war they can win, that Iran can militarily defeat the United States of America.

Tehran is doing all it can to goad and prod the US into war, from the sponsorship of Al-Zarqawi’s terrorism upon Iraqi Shias, ordering Mookie (Muqtada al-Sadr) to have his Shia militia attack British troops in Basra, and publicly announcing the Revolutionary Guards will be running Iran’s nuclear program, to coordinating an alliance between Hamas, Islamc Jihad, and Hezbollah to wage terror in Israel.

Iran’s new president Ahmadi Nejad has gone out of his way to insult the EU and the IAEA in their efforts to pretend Iran’s nuke program is for “peaceful purposes.” Awarding the IAEA the Nobel Peace Prize this week – a relief, actually, compared to the presumed frontrunners, joke-humanitarian frauds Bob Geldof and Bono – was a last ditch effort to provide cover for its pathetic failure with Iran.

Ariel Sharon in Israel has now informed the White House that Israel will very soon have no choice but to destroy Iran’s nuke plants. This is in reality a humiliating admission that Mossad lacks the capacity to destroy them by quiet sabotage.

An overt military attack is what Tehran wants – an excuse to trigger all-out Hezbollah rocket and suicide terror attacks on Israel, closing the Straits of Hormuz so no oil gets out of the Gulf, pouring in Revolutionary Guard troops (already pre-positioned) invading southern Iraq to “protect our fellow Shias” from chaos caused by Iran in the first place.

If Israel or the US refrains from attacking its nuke plants, the mullahs will precipitate another pretext for war – invading southern Iraq in response to the US bombing terrorist sanctuaries in a “brother Islamic state”, Syria, or sponsoring civil war chaos in southern Iraq to completely intolerable levels.

Ahmadi Nejad and the mullahs think they can win a war with the US because they believe they have an ace in the hole: The tomb of Ali ar-Ria (765-818 AD) known as the Shrine of the “Eighth Imam” or Imam Reza, a sacred pilgrimage site for Shia Moslems in Mashad.

Mashad is 500 miles further away from Iraq than Tehran in northeastern Iran. The mullahs have built a hardened underground command center for conducting the war with the US and housing key government/military leaders in Mashad – right next to the Shrine of Imam Reza.

Such positioning of the command center, the mullahs think, gives the US an Islamic Hobson’s Choice. If the US doesn’t destroy it for fear of destroying the shrine, they win. If the US does bomb it, the mullahs think it’s hardened enough so that most of the leaders won’t be killed, but the collateral damage to the shrine will so inflame Shias that those in Iraq will rise in total revolt against US and British soldiers, and those in Iran will flock to the Mullacracy’s support.

The mullahs, in other words, believe that the destruction of a sacred Shia shrine by the US is what will save them.

This shrine has been demolished before. By a Moslem invader from Afghanistan, Sabuktagin, in 993. It was rebuilt by his son, Mahmud of Ghazni. By the Mongols in 1220. It was rebuilt 100 years later by a Mongol ruler of Persia, Sultan Muhammad Khudabandeh. Damaged by the conquering horde of Tamerlane in the late 14th century, it was rebuilt again by Tamerlane’s son Shahrokh Mirza. By invading Turkmen and Uzbeks (fellow Moslems) in the early 1500s. It was rebuilt by Shah Abbas (r. 1588-1629). Demolished by an earthquake in 1673, it was rebuilt by Nader Shah (r. 1636-1647).

In the 20th century, the shrine was shelled by Russian artillery in 1912, partially wrecked by Shah Reza Khan’s troops (attacking rebels to his new regime using it as a sanctuary) in 1936, leveled by a massive earthquake in 1978, built anew, then bombed in 1994 by a terrorist of the People’s Mujahadeen with 26 pilgrims dead.

Such a history means it will be rebuilt once more should an American cruise missile inadvertently damage it. The Eighth Imam should contribute to the liberation of Iran, not to its continued oppression.

However much Bush wants to avoid it, however much he hopes his rhetoric will be dissuasive, war with Iran is coming fast. The mullahs see they have no choice but to force the war in Iraq to a head by a war with them.

The Democrats will once again demonize Bush as a warmonger and be as traitorous as ever. Yet if GW has the courage to take out the Mashad command center and annihilate the political and military leadership of the Mullahcracy, both wars – in Iraq and Iran – can be won quickly.

The Mullah’s ace in the hole may prove to part of a Dead Man’s Hand.